Friday, June 30, 2017

Steve Randy Waldman‏ of interfluidity called this thread: Thread, counterintuitive and disheartening. (Here is Aaron Carroll saying that Medicaid access may not have increase opioid deaths and of course that Medicaid expansion may still net out positive.)

It could for a number of reasons be that the current western healthcare (beyond the basics that you do not need insurance to get) is not good for those at the low end of diligence, IQ, conscientiousness scales.

Here are some possible reasons why:

MD’s often do not explain enough and nobody follows up.

Protocols are sometimes too complicated and require too much attention.

Opiates are too tempting.

etc.

If true it could explain:

Why the more educated (a good measure of the above traits) are getting healthier faster than the less educated.

New Hampshire has the second highest opiate death rate in the US. Very good economy in NH. These epidemics come and go look more like viruses than anything caused by despair.
So why would West Virginia be the leader in overdose deaths, because it has been loosing its best and brightest for a long time leaving a higher percent on the lower end of diligence, IQ, conscientiousness scales, the most susceptible.

People often learn skills on the job and BTW you would have to make internships pay minimum wage to be fair.

Jobs integrate younger and older people and older people's life styles are generally better.

If you consider the difference in pay between the market rate and the minimum wage rate a tax, fair in my mind, the tax falls on employers of low wage labor in the short run and consumers of products produced by low wage labor in the longer run, why tax them more than others? BTW Dear Republicans even if you do not call it a tax it's still a tax, so you might want to support a higher taxes to fund an hourly wage subsidy or a UBI.

And yes, I would get rid of it all together and leave it to individuals, unions to work out wages.

BTW statistics and be tricky and when you read economic studies, you need to think about what could have gone wrong on the study and how they could be biased, but statistics are much better than stories (anecdotes). Statistics and theory are the best we have. The old saw "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." has truth to it but again statistics are better than the alternatives.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

My null hypothesis
says that spending more inflation adjusted on schooling than was spent
in 1960 has no positive effect on education. (that's about 1/3 of what is spent today.)

Also that only a tiny fraction (perhaps .1%) of schools are good or bad
schools. The rest are judged good or bad have good and bad students. And
so parents should relax should only try to avoid the worst .1% of
schools and not pay more for a home in a “good” school district.

Also my mother has told me that her parents went to school for just 1
year, yet they where educated. They were not superstitious as many where in
their era. They could read and write and do arithmetic. They read books.
They owned and ran a barber shop. they speculated in real-estate (but
lost most but not all of it in the great depression) and sent their son
to Brown University.

School is not only place people learn.

Perhaps 3 years of formal schooling would be enough for most people.
Never the less in the modern world we would need something for them to
do so maybe keeping most in school to 16 is a good idea, not so much for
education but to keep them out of trouble.

The Amish drop out early and do OK.

For a modern example, the guy who invented this car claims to have dropped out of school at 14 years old.

Also, if we cannot teach children more and it looks like we cannot, we should focus on teaching the most valuable stuff.

Friday, June 9, 2017

End the War
on Drugs, give amnesty for non-violent drug prisoners, and criminal justice
reform with the aim of reducing incarceration rates. What has done more
economic harm to the poor than having their working-age men locked away

Hire more and better police. See here. Poor people are too often victims of crime and fraud. It is better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house/neighbourhood with crime, violence or biting insects.

Allow any subdividing and residential building that increased overall density and some that does not.

Wipe out the mosquito. seems like it cold not be done but heard about it on NPR see here.